Mick Hartley

It's good to see more women athletes speaking out. Here's Karen Pickering, a former world champion and Olympic swimmer for Great Britain:

The guidance that was released last year by the Sports Council Equality Group, which includes UK Sport, concluded that “for many sports, the inclusion of transgender people, fairness and safety cannot co-exist in a single competitive model”. So what is a sport’s priority? For elite sport, either you prioritise inclusion or fairness — you cannot prioritise both.

Testosterone suppression does not make it a fair competition. It is plain to see the physical differences between men and women. Reducing testosterone levels is just a tiny part of it and doesn’t negate the effects of puberty on the male body. A female is not just her testosterone levels. We are more than that.

It seems to me that the governing bodies of some sports could be on the wrong side of this argument and are not looking after 50 per cent of their membership.

Something of an understatement, I'd say. But no doubt she's trying to be diplomatic about it.

There are ways to achieve inclusion in grassroots sport. I would like people to be able to live however they choose to live and identify as whatever and whoever they want to, but, in elite sport, I still believe in a female category. There is a reason why a protected category for women’s sport was created, the same as for different age groups and different disabilities.

I believe the best way forward is to have a female category and an open category, and the female category cannot be opened up to anyone who wasn’t born female. The open category would be a safe space for everybody, whatever their gender, and wouldn’t inhibit anyone’s rights. But it would protect women’s sport.

The problem with that is, not just that trans women like to win and it's much easier against women, but that they claim that they need to be affirmed as women. "I'm now a woman, and therefore I must be allowed to compete as a woman." But just because they believe they're women doesn't mean that the rest of us have to play along with their little fantasies – which is why it's such an important battle for them. We're (mostly) prepared to go along with their whims: if they want to live as women and dress like women, then fine, good luck to them – we can adapt to that. Live as let live and all that. "Live your best life in peace", as JK Rowling said. But here, in sport, it hits the buffers of biological reality, and they have to acknowledge that in that sense – in the real biological world – they're really not women. And that seems to be a step too far for the trans activists, for whom "trans women are women" must mean exactly that: women in every way.

I sense there is disappointment that some governing bodies haven’t worked to protect women’s sport better. Whether or not trans athletes are winning is irrelevant. If you take the situation with the swimmer Lia Thomas at the NCAA championships in the US last month, there are scholarships, places on teams, in finals, on the podium at stake for female athletes. The ripple effects of one trans woman competing are huge.

People are asking: why are athletes so quiet on this subject? What worries me the most is whether they are being gagged and whether they are being allowed to speak freely on this subject. If not, why not?

There is a history of women not being able to speak up. We are where we are now because women have had to fight for their position. It seems again that women are being gagged — they may be being discouraged from speaking out against their governing bodies, or afraid of being abused online.

There is an attitude of “deal with it and shut up”. Decisions are being made by men. I find that frightening and a dangerous precedent to set.

Women being silenced: it's the same old story.

It's not a complicated problem. In fact it couldn't be easier: no men in women's sports. It's just sad that so many governing bodies in sport are making such heavy weather of it all, and seem far more keen to appease the trans crowd than to safeguard women against men who barge in and steal their sporting achievements.